Mark Ravenhill and Leila Latif join Tom Sutcliffe to review:

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's new film Bitter Christmas, a tragi comedy told across different time frames, and questioning the relationship between reality and fiction in the film industry.

Author of best selling The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin's new speculative fiction novel is Under Story, which asks if you could turn back the clock, would you live your life a second time?

And Ridley Scott's film The Dog Stars, starring Jacob Elordi, set in a post-apocalyptic world.

Also, art critic Louisa Buck joins Tom to discuss the life and work of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama who has died at the age of 97.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Andrea Kidd

Ahead of her sixth performance at the BBC Proms the mezzo soprano star Joyce DiDonato talks to Kirsty about the explosive potential of her voice. 

VP Head of YouTube EMEA - Pedro Pina - delivers the flagship address of this year's Edinburgh TV Festival. He gives his perspective on the continuing evolution of tv as we know it. 

Comedy is at the heart of the Edinburgh Festivals, and today the shortlist for the Edinburgh Comedy Award has been revealed. Director of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards Nica Burns is joined by chair of judges Liz Lewin to discuss the names everyone's talking about this year. 

Life life and work of legendary singer and actor Tim Curry is celebrated by culture critic and broadcaster David Benedict and Tim’s lifelong friend, the gallerist Richard Cork.

Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Caitlin Sneddon

Samira Ahmed spoke to Dolly Parton in 2023. As her death is announced Front Row pays tribute to the star of country music who sold more than 100 million records and wrote over 3,000 songs in a career that spanned six decades.

A chance to hear Meg Mason, the bestselling author of Sorrow and Bliss, about her new novel, Sophie Standing There, which deals with celebrity obsession and the publishing industry. A new film looks at the story of the Second World War through General De Gaulle’s eyes. We speak to its director, Antonin Baudry, about De Gaulle: Resistance - this summer's hit in French cinemas. And we mark sixty years of the Notting Hill Carnival with founder member Allyson Williams and Ricky Belgrave, DJ and chair of the British Association of Sound Systems.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and William Lee Adams join Tom Sutcliffe to review:

The Life of M - the new novel from Rachel Cusk. The book centres on a writer’s attempt to chronicle the life of a globally famous film star, and explores the strangeness of celebrity.

Stop! That! Train! - a comedy disaster movie featuring many of the stars from RuPaul's Drag Race.

Coyote vs Acme - after a lengthy and tumultuous journey, including being shelved by its studio, the much anticipated Looney Tunes film finally reaches cinemas. The blend of live action and animated film follows Wile E. Coyote as he takes legal action against the Acme Corporation for providing him with defective goods.

Chinese animated film Niu Lai has become an unexpected box-office and social media phenomenon. Initially released to little attention, the film gained widespread visibility online, generating debate about independent filmmaking, internet culture and the economics of contemporary cinema in China.

And as HMV announces that it wants to become a 'destination' for books on the high street, a group of independent booksellers calls on the Prime Minister to provide the same tax relief that pubs and live music venues have recently been granted. What is the state of bookselling on the high street? Lauren Brown, Deputy News Editor at The Bookseller, joins.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Tim Bano

Ann Droid and Motherland star Paul Ready on his debut one man show Little Animals, a powerful piece of writing on climate, consumerism and the anxieties of being a Dad in today's world.

The founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales on his book The Seven Rules of Trust, an optimistic view of how technology can impact on our lives.

Comedian and actor Rosie Holt on her two shows at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe - Churchill's Urinal and The Illegal Aliens Have Landed.

And Senegalese musician Senny Camara talks to us about performing on the kora, traditionally the preserve of male musicians, and performs for us live.

Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan.

As contemporary art venue, The Light, prepares to open in Durham, its artistic director Tony Guillan, and the art critic Louisa Buck, discuss the new building and its opening exhibition, Victory Over the Sun: Encounters with Light.

Comedian Iain Stirling is known to many for narrating Love Island. He's stepped out from behind the scenes to front new reality tv show Race Against The Tide where participants compete against each other and the shoreline to create sandcastle art.

As her latest novel, Little Spark, is published, novelist Jess Kidd explains the appeal of the Victorian century.

Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

The comedian Joe Lycett has long dabbled in art, but it's a serious business now as his first ever solo exhibition ‘Everything Must Go’ has just opened at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. He talks about how this show came together and why its most eye-catching piece is a giant pink and blue woolly mammoth called Martin.

Charlotte Higgins talks to Samira Ahmed about her book Ukrainian Lessons, and the role artist's play in the cultural identity of the country.

With poetry sales at an all time high, we speak to poets Nikita Gill and Lucas Jones, two writers credited as being part of this boom.

Entries for A-level arts subjects continue to fall. However, this year saw a drop of nearly six per cent in entries for A level English Literature. What does this continued decline mean for the health of the arts and humanities? Hetan Shah is Chief Executive of the British Academy and Professor Robert Eaglestone is education policy lead at the English Association.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Andrea Kidd

Academic and critic Maria Delgado and writer and producer Jake Cunningham join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss the film Tony, a film about the early career of food writer Anthony Bourdain, who is played by Dominic Sessa. The film also stars Antonio Banderas, who becomes an unexpected mentor for the young chef.

They also talk about Death Note: The Musical. Based on the best-selling Manga series of the same name, the Barbican show tells the story of a student who discovers a notebook which gives him the power to kill.

The final item for review is Nobel Prize in Literature winner Mario Vargas Llosa’s final novel, I Give You My Silence, where a music journalist is on a quest to tell the story of an unforgettable musician. The book is also a love letter to Peruvian culture.

Sarah Ditum discusses Jason Arday's memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things.

This programme was broadcast before the announcement of Jason Arday's death.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Claire Bartleet

Australian writer and performer Hannah Reilly talks to us about her much-anticipated one woman show about sex, power and authenticity, Roleplay, which is produced by the team behind Fleabag and Baby Reindeer and which has sold out in Edinburgh but is heading to London for a run in the autumn.

Critic Fergus Morgan talks us through the other shows which are making a splash at this year's Edinburgh Festivals - from a radical sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, which stars Golden Globe-winning actor Wagner Moura, and in which 12 members of the audience are brought on stage to deliver a verdict in A Trial, to a reimagining of Virginia Woolf's The Waves - presented to audiences in a sauna.

The first international exhibition from Alabama's Legacy of Slavery Museum has come to Edinburgh this month, and we're joined by its founder, eminent lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson to talk about how it depicts the international slave trade and racial brutality over centuries. We're also joined by writer and director Zora Howard whose powerful production Hang Time sees three performers talk about their lives and loves as they appear to be hanging from a tree, and which is inspired in part by the deaths of two men in Southern California in recent years.

And director Louis Paxton talks to us about debut feature film The Incomer, which opens this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival tomorrow night. It's a darkly comic fable in which an awkward council worker (played by Domnhall Gleeson) is sent to a remote Scottish island to relocate a pair of siblings (Gayle Rankin from GLOW and Grant O’Rourke from Outlander), to the mainland, but let's just say things don't quite go to plan.

Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan

Steph McGovern, presenter of new BBC show The Big Deal, is joined by Marie Le Conte to discuss how to buy art.

Fleabag actor Sian Clifford on her lead role in "Lady", a new mockumentary film about a fading aristocrat.

Why has a new show at Edinburgh about Amanda Knox been so controversial? Tristram Fane Saunders gives his assessment live from the Fringe Festival.

And Colin Thubron, both a travel writer and novelist, has a new book which journeys into Egypt and the human mind - literally. He talks about how witnessing brain surgery influenced his novella Passage.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

What's the Royal Shakespeare Company's much anticipated stage adaptation of Game of Thrones like? Critics Boyd Hilton and Kate Maltby give their verdict.

Conductor Marin Alsop on what makes American classical music sound American, ahead of her American Classics Prom on 24 August.

TS Eliot Prize-winning poet Anthony Joseph discusses his new collection, Haunting the Black Air, which journeys from the Trinidad of his childhood to the dancefloors of New York.

And following the news of the death of the music producer William Orbit, music jpurnalist Kate Hutchinson discusses his career, including his work on Madonna's Ray of Light album.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Andrea Kidd